 I'm being to order at 7.05, welcome everybody, welcome board. Are there any additions or changes to the agenda? Yes, I would like to, we just got this from the leaders. It's the errors in our mission certificate that we do every year. It's not on the agenda, but we need to sign this. So, We have to sign it today? Well, it has to be filed by the 17th. And if we don't meet on the 16th, then it's late. So I would like to ask that we sign this, and then the next time, and then formally on the 23rd, if that's when we meet again, we're ratifying it. Okay, is there a motion to sign tonight with formal ratification? We basically have to be tonight formally ratifying. I guess we really have to leave the room and do it. So moved. Brief moves, Mark seconds. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. D.C. will pass on the round. Yep. Any other additions, folks? Okay, are there warrants or something? Yes, there are. Here they are. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Yeah, that's true. We have a personal update first. Yeah, there's not much to update. We haven't received any new applications. And we have not heard from a potential candidate that we interviewed. Okay, anybody else got any personal updates? We have public comment on the agenda. This is for items that are not on the agenda. Or on the agenda tomorrow night. So what is on the agenda that's in front of us is we're gonna work on the budget. We're gonna work on the warning. We will work on the annual report and look again at our timeline. We have, knowing that that is a very full list of items for us to do tonight, tomorrow night, on a continued, in a continued basis on this agenda. We have the participant dam. And tomorrow night we will also talk about any other outstanding items for town meeting and do our usual checking in on what are the other things we need to have on our minds that we may not have got on our lists anywhere. So that being said, are there any items that are public comment on topics that are not on this agenda? I have a couple. Not on this agenda. Okay, Scott, would you like to join us for a couple minutes? Sure. Who's doing it? Denise. Oh, good. I can give you what I'm about to say. Oh, okay, good, that'd be helpful. Yeah. You know, I've known each of you for years, years and years. We've been on committees together. Long time. Charlotte was also a really good mate. And I know each of you are dedicated on us. And we've been here a lot. Could you speak louder? People in the audience are having difficulty. Yes. I don't need this. There we go. There you go. I'll start again. I've known each of you for a long time. I or Charlotte have served on boards and committees with each of you, each of you for years. I know each of you are dedicated, honest, hardworking, and smart. I know we're neighbors and on the same side for every important issue for sure. I know the past few years have been really difficult. And I appreciate your persistence and your willingness to hand in. Thank you for all that you've done. Now, my next section is, Sharon, you might think this has to do with the agenda, but with an item, with a budget, but not because it's more. I asked the board to increase the salary for the town clerk by $15,000 to reflect the merit of the individual and the market conditions for someone with his knowledge, experience, and education. I have similar consideration for the assistant town clerk. Jeremy has served Cabellus very well over the past 18 months. He's kept the town office on a fairly even keel during the very difficult time. He's stepped up to be many different jobs well outside the statutory requirements. He's given us great elections. He's courteous and helpful to everyone who contacts him about town business. He's knowledgeable about the town and the office, but he's constantly learning. Thank you for what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Scott. Thank you. All of it. Let's go. That was pretty clear. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? I don't share. I'd like, as a courtesy, to be able to make public comments simply because, as you know, I've accused myself on a matter of favor. This is a dam. I'm happy to speak as a member of the public. And I think there's a very good stance that I will not be able to make tomorrow meeting, since it is my first day in the legislature, and there is a meeting that I've got that tomorrow night. So I would like to make a very brief public comment. Okay, would you, just because you're recusing yourself, just make that visual? Yes. Would you have said the public comments very well? I work, I'll leave you still. Is everybody okay, Mark? Yeah, we're okay with this, okay, go ahead. Thank you for the courtesy. I appreciate it. It won't take much of your time. I want to address one specific issue since I know tomorrow don't need a lot of conversation. I know the board is concerned about the amount of liability, insurance, limited to a million bucks. First of all, I apologize if this is my fault. I've known this for two years ever since I had my first conversation with Red Sat thing two years ago. I've known it was a million dollars and it never bothered me. And I want to tell you why it never bothered me. Whenever you're dealing with risk, you rarely have the legitimacy, you rarely have the ability to just say, this is the risk, it's this risk compared to that risk. And so in my view, here are the risks. If one risk is the town takes the dam, it's a concrete dam with a rebar that's been engineered by a reputable engineering part. What are the chances that it's going to fail? I don't know, one in 500, something like that? And if it does, then there's litigation and let's say the litigation is to five million bucks. So there's a four million dollar liability over the million dollars, okay. What are the chances that the town will prevail in that litigation? What are the design, defect rule, and all the other rules that protect the towns that act in good faith and do design? And what are the chances that somehow a judge would rule with the town's liability and the engineering company which has its liability insurance and the contractor which has its liability insurance designed, I would say one in a thousand. That's the risk I'm one in a thousand. What is the risk if the town says, well, we're worried about this and so we're not going to take ownership? After 20 years of saying that every solution involved with the town takes ownership? Well, the dam won't be fixed. So what are the chances then that the dam will fail? I'd say close to 100%. And what if it does, then it happens financially. Well, of course we know the story goes and we know the town is damaged. One of our five towns is materially damaged. We know that. Villages. One of our villages is materially damaged. And the town will be sued of course because the town's all been sued. And I think because of the good defenses the town has the town will probably prevail. However, the town will lose, well, somewhere between 50 and 75 homes will be dramatically reduced in value and those owner homeowners will be damaged. And they will be kissed. And they will be sued. But at any rate, so there will be litigation, there's always litigation. People will be very angry. But most importantly, the town will lose somewhere between 25 and $50 million in excess value. And the town will either have to cut its budget dramatically or it will have to raise taxes to compensate for that loss. And that raising taxes will be far greater than you would ever have to raise taxes to pay $30 million in excess liability. So on the one hand, we have a extremely slim chance that the town would ever be in the position of having to ask its citizens to cough up money because of the lack of adequate insurance for a rebuilt dam on the one hand. And on the other hand, you have a almost certain possibility that you will have to go to the citizens of the town for more money to pay for the loss in excess value. That's all I wanna say, thank you. I have a question. Yes. Are you aware of, so just for everybody's benefit what Mark was referring to is is that through VLCT passive, which is the normal place in this palette of those for insurance, we can only purchase up to a million dollars of coverage for the dam if it were in the town's ownership. Right, and fixed to state standard. Right, so right now it's not insurable through passive. Even if it were fixed, it's insurable only to a million. Which is, the point is, or the raises the question whether that's enough. Is there, are you aware Mark of private insurance that's available up to $5 million or even more depending on what somebody decides is what full coverage looks like? Right. And that comes from? Yes, I am, only to this extent. One of the things, the Curtis Ponds Association looked, the dam working through, she goes, you guys know that well, looked into private insurance. And what we do is we looked at all the other dams we could find and the only dams that have insurance are public insurance. We were unable to locate an insurer who would insure a new dam. So contact an insurer? Yes, we did. The answer is no. There is not private insurance. We were left not too far in our lives but there's a lot of private insurance available. We called insurers, we talked to- You didn't call Lloyds of London? No, we did not. We didn't talk to the insurers, we didn't, I'm not saying, I'm saying I'm hedging my bets, Sharon, because what we did was, some work, some calls. One of the things we did early on was contact other towns that own dams. And you know, there is one, it's Far-Fairly, is it Fairly? Fairly or West Fairly? Yeah, it's a dam, three towns got together and rebuilt that dam. And my understanding was, I think it spread and it told me, they're insured through the past. Except for each town? Good question. In other words, do they together have three million? I think it's one. But Fred, I put in a call to Fred just to ask him. Could we ask people in the audience to not be talking on some of these? I put in a call to Fred to ask him. And I think it wouldn't be hard to find out because he's the one that turned me on to the other town, and he would know. Can I ask a question here too? There was also the issue of insurability. I mean, we can insure that when it's in place, correct? When it's rebuilt to state standards. What is insuring it up between the time? That's exactly the chicken and cake problem that we need to solve. And in other words, very briefly, remember, the town can't take it if it's not insured. Right, it should. Right, it's alright. It can't be insured until it's built to state standards. To do that, you need the money to pay the contractor to build it. For that, we need the bonds. So the question is, how does the town issue bonds? For a dam, it doesn't own them. And what we came up with, and what rest in peace, Mr. Giuliani said about what clearly were, is that the town would receive and put into escrow quick claim deeds from the owners, which it could record at its will or not. And the Joe, the claim, when I explained this to him, gosh, a year ago, or no, a year ago, six months ago, Joe said in a conversation, no, I think it would be better if it was irrevocable offers of dedication. But in any case, Giuliani's view was, once that happened, the town would have sufficient control and dominion over the dam. It's a unilaterally potato that it could legitimately issue bonds, whether those bonds are taxable or non-taxable, I cannot opine at this moment. We've retained Tom Muloney, who's one of the six bond counsel along with Bob, who's- I think we should name him. Yeah, let's look, yeah, because we're heading into, this is exactly the point of tomorrow's meeting. So let's, thank you, Mark, and let's turn to our, that paper and pen, could you hand it to me, please? Turn to our regular, our regular, little agenda. Thank you for your courage. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Welcome. I thought the legislature started last week. It did. I went away. I was blinded. I had this planned family meeting a year ago, praying in front of me. I thought, tomorrow's my first day. Your first day. We'll have a big time. I'm gonna be here. Hello, Wendy. Hello, this is Wendy. Hi, Wendy. Hi, Wendy. Wendy, you are here to walk us through the final pieces that you dropped into our budget, am I correct? Yeah, I mean, most of what's in there is- Okay. The insurance and the camera part. So, Wendy, I am going to draft budget as of 1.5 with Wendy's changes. Yeah, I put it in the folder. You did. It's in a different, even though it's largely the same, it's a different version than we were working on 1.5 because it doesn't seem to retain formulas that I had built in for, you know, having a quick look at what's the percentage of increase. Guys, remember that one? So- Sure, I'm wondering if we should start at the top. Well, that's what I would think wrong about that. Wendy, when you were looking at it, did you, well, there's a formula. Maybe they just, where are the changes in the copy of January 5th? It's the 1.5. No. Do you all have a copy of the draft budget as of January 5th, but with my update? Yes, but I- Afternoon? Yes, but Wendy, which tab did you make the changes in? The one under passage, I think. Oh. But according to the needs, that was- Right, yeah. We created a PDF so that we could send it out. Right. So- Okay. So walk us out. Walk us out. I figured that's where you wanted me to do it. Yeah, and I have that open now and everyone who wants to does as well. Yeah. Okay, go ahead, Wendy. Actually, I don't know, but- And you did that somewhere else. Right, but that was like a one-time big mileage. So keep- Moving along. No, I'll make a note, unless- Well, actually, you know what? No, I don't want to do that because for one thing, I want to duplicate and note the January- That we're working on January 9th. I'm going to do that right now. We don't want to- Oh, okay. Yep. Can you see that? I don't know when you want me to duplicate. Yep, I'm making a new tab and I'm going to work in that one so that any changes we make as we go are- From tonight? Are documented from tonight. Okay, so go ahead. So, Wendy, I'm going to delete those two lines and then we'll have the record of the previous of the notes. So what is your new tab? Okay. Yep, so now we go from the Dinklin tax collector section to the town property. Okay, now there's no wages in the town treasurer line. That's because we moved them up to that treasurer business manager town administrator line. Okay. So- It's up a little under select form. We moved it under select form. All right. Yep, we did that a while ago. Okay, Wendy, where were you on- And those two lines are gone and I'm now working in a new tab so that I will keep records. Okay, keep going. Okay. Yeah. And when it was we could discuss tonight, I didn't make any changes there. I just, they're acknowledging, I think that's what is why they're highlighting themselves. No, or that we were generally done with them. Right, what I said was those were changes we had made the last time. And that we, and that we felt they were generally done. Right. Yeah. I think that's what I need before January. That's where we should scroll down to now. Yep, but that's a general order. Okay, Wendy- The thing I put down is a question mark, which is on line 67, is a number of contracts are meet right now, project something in there on even though if that would compensate, it could take you a few more months to find someone. Right. But I didn't know if you wanted to add a line at someone that was there. It doesn't have to be, but I just put a question mark to just kind of put a mark on it. What's our, do you know what the amount of our current contract is, Wendy? So the year to date is 28, 8, 20. That's right in the middle of it. And I annualized what was there and then I took 10% of it and came up with 7,600 as a, well, what's your, what's your year December number, Wendy? Let me repeat what I just said. So guys, I took 28, 8, 20 and divided it by four and a half and multiply that by 12 and then took 10% because Sharon picked 10% which is the only reason that's the only rationale and said came up with 76. And what number did you come up with? As 10% of the annualized, I came up with 76,85 and I did that as a place to start in what might we want to put in that box, if anything. So where are we at, Wendy? Did you find it? I didn't bring it. Is it, is it well, is it, does it change wildly from the middle of November to the month of December through month of December? And then we have a lecture. What a bit more. It was quite a bit more. Yeah, because if we had the December amount, we could like double it. Right. But still, so once we have an annual number, let's just pick guys. Do we want the first question threshold? Do we want to put something in there even though we have a budget for treasure business furniture? I think we would be smart to put something in to support training. So who does 10% seem to be able to do that? Okay, so Wendy, have you got a number? Yep, you'll find it. Wendy, what does DRA scan for? Disaster recovery agreement. Okay, very important. And you have redundancy in your own servers, I take it. What if we put in $8,000 for right now as that. So Wendy said December was a lot more. So instead of $7,608,000, I'm sorry, what line is this? I'm talking about line budget. $667,000. $65,000 on ours. Numeric contract services is one of that. Yeah, so, but okay. You mean for the Numeric contract services, right? Yeah, Wendy, even that. You have a higher number. That's a short training. Ready? Yes. Starting in July. So folks, if even five is a lot, and we know we're gonna have to trim this because we haven't done that yet. Right. So what if I just put 3,000 in on Wendy's, skip that step of trimming back when Wendy's telling us five is a lot. I don't know, I think five is over. Even to support somebody that we hire. I mean, that's fine, but we need to remember that Wendy said that's a lot. Right. All right, I put in five and I'll make a note when he says five is a lot. Probably we don't spend a lot on mileage. Right. I would think 300 is enough. One for one. It keeps, yeah, it keeps going up. I mean, we could put in 500. There's 461 miles, it seems like, you might have some trainings. A lot of the trainings are online now. Too. Some are, yeah. The mileage that we paid out so far this fiscal year was unusual. We don't know. I think it was related. Yeah. That's a comfortable maybe? So we have historically budgeted 200s and at least looking at FY22, we used some of that. We used 40% of it. No, 60% of it. So if we put in... What about putting in 350? Oh, you think 300 is not enough? I think 300 is enough. You know, the scheme of things, $100, $200 is not, this is not worth wasting our time. Yeah, that's what I hope it is. It's like, we've never used a full budget except for that one circumstance. If we go, knowing that mileage has gone up, we could put in 250. I think we'd leave it at 300. Okay. I'm just recognizing that we're gonna have to come back. Three. Yeah. Okay. That's the 300 for this. So I really don't think... So you think 600 is... But there's 117, there's numbers in each. Yeah, I think it went through all lines. But there's numbers in each. Yeah. And I have a few that's expensive. So in other words, should we should add those together? So should we just have it completely? It really all actually a copy of this. I mean, that's just being a copy of this. Yeah, make one more. Make one more. A copy of this is what I think would happen. I think we should... $95 should probably be here to date. And if you look at that, that'd be it, right? Yeah. Well, 412, 45, I just did the math. Yeah, yeah. Can we... I actually think those are duplicated. I actually think... Okay, so I made one line. I turned what's in now in our spreadsheet. Copy or lease and maintenance agreement on line 80. Can we make it... Are we making it one line? That was what Wendy just recommended. Yeah. Then if we are at 400 so far, then 600 isn't enough. Is 900 enough? 900 is about right, Wendy? Well, after you get a budget... I'm looking at the combined, 295, unless they're... Unless adding 295 and 117 together is 412. And that's not halfway through the year. That's where I cut lines, landed at 900. So I think it's going to be that high. Right, but come... Okay, so I'm going to combine it into one line with a total of $900, right? That's what I just did. And then, so I would put 900 in line 83. Okay, we can move on. Does that get for a line? Yeah, your lines are different than ours now. Because I'm working in at least the one I'm working in. But I made a line, copy release and maintenance agreement, I put $900 in FY24. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you Barbara. See you around. Thank you Barbara. Night Barbara, thank you. I didn't do anything with that. That was one that we were still thinking about. Okay. I think. So there's 5,000 in there now, and you need to transfer the eight in there so that'll give us a total, different total, right? Yeah, but the transfer is in current fiscal year and what I'll be doing there is a bunch of journal entries to move that 8,000 that was funded in fiscal 23 to that particular reserve month. So our note in column G, guys, says after FY23 budgeted transfer of 8,000, that's my note. Yeah, that by final of 20,000, 20,000. Yeah, so that's 20,000, so then if you budget another 5,000 this year and pass it, that means it'll have 25 by the end of fiscal year. Right, and which is a good healthy amount. It's healthy considering, you know, we know the whole point of a reserve appropriation is money there when you need it. Okay, Wendy, you want to keep us moving to something else? Yeah, absolutely. The next changes were under appeal taxes and benefits and we have all been calculated. I also sent you a companion Excel spreadsheet that I built so that if there were changes to salaries or where people's salary was, like the DPW director, I moved up into general funds. So this is a reflection of those changes. This is FISA and NETI for the DPW director, the treasurer business manager, town administrator, clerk, third assistant clerk. Okay. So it's good, and also the FISA NETI is for all the real part-timer folks that you have. The stipend folks? Yeah, the stipends, the webmasters, the former clerk who cleans the town hall, all that together. And you can see that on that companion spreadsheet that I built. The dealers' retirement, same thing, but that's only for those who are dealers covered and anticipate between who people would be dealers covered. Health insurance reflects a family coverage because that would be the maximum for the two new people that you may hire, the director and the treasurer business manager, assuming they might want family plans. There was an 11.6% increase in through process this year. I didn't add anything to that. So... Wendy, let me... No, keep going, sorry, I don't need to cut you off. Okay. The HRA contribution is based on the town's policy for the folks in general funds here. Dental insurance is currently what we're paying. That price is actually, if it's going to increase, it would be July 1. I don't have any idea what that might be at this time. It's still pretty inexpensive. And then the disability insurance. So all of these things, yet another increase from Line 96 and my spreadsheet to Line 101 were all calculated off that sheet that I sent you. And if you make a change to a salary tonight, I can go on that sheet, I can calculate it and we can bring the correction here. Okay. But we're ready to roll in and do the time change. Can I just revisit what I heard you say is included and I know you said you said you have a separate spreadsheet, but I only have one screen and... Yeah, stop it. I'll take your pass. No, no, no, let me just ask you. I have it and we can use it if we need to. But let me ask you the question. So this entire section as appropriate includes the assumption that we have a town clerk who's receiving benefit, the Director of Public Works receiving benefits and the treasure, right? Three people receiving benefits. That's correct. Those are the three full-time or the general fund for both under... Okay. I'm gonna just make a note of that for you. Yeah, good, thanks. Yeah, hang on. Okay, thanks, Wendy. Okay, so in the total, they're not insignificantly just benefits as over $124,000 and that's not everybody. Right, that's just the three employees that we mentioned. Right, I think it's important to note this increase in blue cross, blue shield is 11.6%. That's a huge jump. Like a baby? That's a big jump and if we have to explain some of these increases, it's important to remember that. Yep, yep. Plus you're adding two new people to it because right now, you only have one employee on benefits and general fund. Right, right. That's which is an anomaly year we've had. Right, well you're 23, you had budgeted actually for two. We've been utilized at all, right? Right, and the DPW position is created by reshaping some other positions. Right, and if you look our year to date actual for FY23, those figures are way low from what we were thinking they were gonna be because we haven't had the staff. Right, right, so that in terms of the actual. And when I say reshaped, we didn't ultimately in the FY24 budget, we do not have more FTEs. No. We do not have more FTEs. It's important that we all remember that. Right. Okay, Wendy, keep going. Okay, the next place where I made a change was under planning commission. Planning commission had asked you folks under what happened to what it is to allocate $25,000 to planning commission reserve funds and they don't see a need for assistant wages at this time. So on the sheet that I sent you, I zeroed that out and I added this line, PC reserve funds, planning commission reserve funds from 5,000. That again would be like a trade, if you pass that, that would be like a transfer out to that fund if it were created and I know they need to talk about the fact she's gonna add that to your warning. Yeah, please, yeah. So the question was the reduction in expenses from 1,000 to 500, that is, I remember, was that's the suggestion of the planning commission, right? Yes, these numbers came directly from the PC. So the numbers are what they were, except for that change, moving the 5,000 to a different line to a reserve fund. Okay. It doesn't look like they spent anything in fiscal year 2023. Well, just to clarify, if we leave it, if we budget it and it doesn't get used, then it goes back to the general fund, right? Yes, it does. And if we have a reserve fund, then it goes there. It stays there. Right, right. Right, and the net, their net proposal is a, is a, is a reduction. That's perfect. Yes. I didn't remember. Well, no, 57 is 772. Yeah. The next place where, if I can move on. Yes, you may. Yeah. The next place is Undertown Hall. And the, I split up the electric utility to put that under utilities because right now, for whatever reason, utilities, phone and internet all went to that one here. The electric bill isn't too high for the town office, isn't used, you know, every day like town offices. So based on current cost, I think $1,000 is enough for the utilities, meaning the electric bill. And phone and internet runs right now about 150, 160, unless the phone and internet for the town hall. And I think Denise and I talked about that today. And I think that that makes sense. Yeah, it's just under $2,000. So it seems like that ought to be reasonable. Maybe we see the 511 savings on the melt, but that seems like in line with what we're paying now to consolidate it. Yeah, I doubt there'll be any savings, but there might be better service. Okay. Hopefully they're sure it's all better. The security alarm, that has been budgeted and expensed previously in the town, or it has been expensed, not budgeted, but expensed in under the town office. It really warms here. I'll be sure to make a journal entry even for 23 to make sure it goes to the right place. That's another thing about this review with the budget highlighted to me some little six-ups that kind of need to happen in the GL as well. Good, thank you. So just, Wendy, before you do that, I just wanna note that we should have done this in each section as people, as we all consider what we're saying. This goes up, that goes down. We're gonna have internet here. Yay, it'll cost more. We're, that section I just calculated the increase, it's 20%, it's $3,000 increase 20%. And that's for two reasons. One is that we have, we have inadequately budgeted in recent years the town hall reserve fund and because of the increase for internet. Anyway, all right, keep going, Wendy. Down, we are down to long-term debt as we said. You know what? I'm sensing I may have made a mistake here. Where? Don't see that anywhere here. Well. Propane. There's a propane, but it's still utilities. It's utilities and I was thinking it was just electric. This, because year-to-date we spent $1,100 that's through November. It's a good thing I'm catching this. All right, so we can't do, all right. Okay, so yeah, so our budget FY23 budget was 3,200 over at FY22 actual 4,700. Didn't we think that in FY22 we'd spent a lot of money was that the year that there was a lot of work time? No, it was before. It was before the work was done? Why does the budget such a $1,500 reduction for 23 FY23 when we realized a $4,700 cost in FY22? Wondering something. Because when we budget, we don't know, we don't have the whole story. We don't know that 4,700 when we're budgeting in November, December. No, I know, but we already had the actual, won't we? No, we didn't, no we didn't, no we didn't. That's right, that's right. Now Wendy, is the cost for heat separate, I can't remember, separate for the town office and separate for the town hall, is that what we're doing now? Yeah, it doesn't come, if you come from a two different location, I think they're both suburban protein and I think I get two bills on that. Okay, okay. So this budget here would just be for the town hall. So under utilities and parentheses, we should put heat and electricity. Yeah. So if you were budgeting 3,200 and I think Denise, when you and I talked today, the electric bill for the town hall really isn't that high. Right. That's where the $1,000 came from. But the electric, but the heating. So bottom line is we've spent 4,700 in the last two years ago. Well in FY22 and FY22, the end of June. Right, and in FY23, so far we've spent 1,127 at the end. But that's November, but that's November, right? That's the climate heating mark. Right, of course January and February is gonna. Yeah. So I mean, I think I'd take the 3,200 and maybe bump a little based on what, what propane has gone up a little since you budgeted a year ago, right? Yep. But is there a reason, specific reason if we spent $4,700 to think that fiscal 24 will be better than fiscal 20? I don't think so. No. I mean, do we have a choice? Don't we have to go with 5,000 bucks? It looks like something happened in fiscal year 22 though, because it's way off of budget. I'm trying to remember what it was to the cost go up. Well, we had, we had that year. And it doesn't reflect the actual fiscal year 22. Because FY22, the town hall, wasn't that during the worst part of COVID and nobody was doing anything here. Right. So without reasons, I don't have an explanation. Yeah, that's kind of weird. So, you know. But I mean, I think if you put 3,600 there, you've got enough to cover the electric, but that's a thousand, and it would be spending $2,600 for the year on heat. That's very possible. And yeah, and so during the six months or so when you're seeing it, that seems reasonable. Now, we met here a lot in 22, right? And so the same would have known. No, we didn't start meeting in person again until last summer. Yeah. I thought I remember being here to discuss the ordinance, the large animal ordinance. We had a hearing here. I remember Doug Lilly was over there. Yeah, no, I remember that. No, I think we were here. I know why you remember that, yes. Yeah, and I think we were here. All right. That may be a count for why it's bumped up because now we started increasing utilization and others too, we let others use this building. So in any case, I put the 3,600 that Wendy suggested. You guys feel okay about that? Yeah. Where are we going next, Wendy? Insurance building. Insurance. I worked with Denise on this a little bit. I did get the numbers today from Broadley and Citizen Towns. Where those numbers would have come from would be the response from your renewal application. They would have sent you statements on what it was gonna cost for general property insurance and liability, unemployment and workers' comp. And I was able to get the details from that on unemployment insurance and workers' compensation. Just a ballpark there, what I meant when I talked to them, they said about 90% of it is highway. So what you see here is the $1,600 for workers' compensation and general funds is based on their renewal costs. Because general funds, people who are administrative are low-cost for workers' compensation. Folks who work on the highways or water and sewer or anything like that, very much higher. So Wendy, that's a split there. And Wendy, so the unemployment insurance and the workers' comp, that is office and highway. Is that right, together? No, this is just general funds. Okay, just general funds. Okay, gotcha. General funds, employees. Yeah. Based on the renewal, okay? Yeah. Even adding other administrative employees isn't going to be hugely expensive here. Most of this expense with workers' comp is good, that's on the highway side. You'll see that at the moment when we go there. Yeah, okay. To build it all, rest of the insurance, which is general liability includes funds. If the liability insurance and all of those things, what you had done in the past was split it about 50-50 between highway general funds. And so the total was like 24,000 and changed 24,588 dollars. I just split it 50-50 because you had done that in the past, clearly. At least I got the total number today. So I feel like these are pretty fair splits here for general funds and then you'll see what it is over in highway when we get there. Okay, thank you. At least I got the verification from the lead today on what these costs were with the renewal. Yeah, this is calendar year 23, by the way. Yeah, this is the form, this document that they sent. I've never seen this before. Yeah. I know I filled out the paperwork for something at VLCT. I remember that, but I never got this. I've never seen that before, but that's so, but now we have it, so that's good. I did check all the sums. So, you know, when you come to the budget expenses, I did check that the right rows were added up. So I did that earlier today, but that total, so far, 738, 397, 85, without the changes necessarily. Hang on, wait a minute, when I deleted those lines, we lost the formula, so let me fix that. So what did you get? 745? Why don't I go ahead and make the changes that we've done right along? Okay. And then I can tell you what the number is. Okay. Yep, I just did it just so you tell me and if we match that'll be good. Right, I'm done here with $5,000. Compared to this, here, wow, it's a big increase. Why would you say it's $3,000, right? Yeah, and what was the, the health insurance was 11.6, but what does- Percent. Right, so if we go back up and look at what health insurance will hang on this for FY23. Denise, let's let, let's make sure that Wendy's numbers match ours as a check on what I, how I address the formula. And then let's not get ahead of ourselves because a little of this increase that we're seeing is because we move positions. Right, right. And they're above the line now rather than below. So, because we have everybody needs to just calm down until we get to the bottom. Nobody's not calm. Okay, good. That's what I was trying to see is what the difference was in insurance from last year. $100 for the copier and putting in nine hundred for the copier made them. So I think I am up to date with you. Let's talk insurance now. But hang on. My health insurance is so much more is that you are going to be hiring two new administrative employees and I have estimated that both of them, they want family plans. Right. Yeah, so we should do. Right. It's, it's not too new. We're filling two positions that have been either filled or vacant. Yes. One of the people that you have in general funds for fiscal year 23 was not a family plan. Right, right, right. Wendy, what's the difference in cost? Hang on, hang on. People come and go, sometimes they're family, sometimes they're not, has nothing to do with whether we hire them. It just doesn't affect the insurance. Before we go on, I want to make sure that our numbers match. Wendy, what do you have in total GG budget, expensive in column F? Okay. So we're on the same page. Good. Everyone's syncing up. John. Can I answer the question about the difference in healthcare costs? Yeah, go ahead. For fiscal year, on fiscal year, which is of course, you know, healthcare is a calendar year kind of thing. The change comes in January. Oh, right. So a family plan, the cost of the tariff is $2,043 per month. If we're a two person, it's $1,454 per month. And a single person is $7.7 per month. Can you give me those numbers again? Two families, right? Yeah, two thousand, two person single. Because that's the employer cost. And their match is 10% or 15 now. 10. 10. I sent you all by people who are working in that department, and it's just the road crew. Right. Wangers are only the benefits. It's over a general fund now. Health insurance against just the road crew coverage. I'm taking insurance, two people in single plan and one person on two family plans, two personal plans. So there's less of a burden there, just to let you know. The disability and the HRs. There's a $500 amount in here for education and training like the original, but that's something I wanted to ask about. And are there classes and stuff that the highway people take because it's higher years have been budgeted to that? There's very little use of that line item, partly because a lot of the trainings that are offered are at no charge, Vermont local roads. Vermont local roads sometimes has trainings. And I don't think they charge us sometimes. I don't think BLCT doesn't have a lot of road training, but John's here. You guys get any information about trainings? That, yeah. And well, there's been a number of reasons historically that John is saying, no, that may have been the case and it could change in the future. Yeah. There's a lot of opportunity to train. Some of it is free and some of it isn't. Right. Yeah, I think we should have somebody in there for training. What line is that? Education and training. Line what? 206. 206? Yeah. Well, it is on this. I'm lining 208. Yeah, we deleted a couple of lines. And then the only changes I made to insurance to the rest of highway is just under insurance where I'm showing you the split here at the other side which is in the property and how do you see insurance just splitting the total amount of the town is 24,588, so I split it 50-50 between general funds and in highway. And what's allocated here for unacquainted is just strictly the highway portion and the comfort compensation to the estimates for the highway portion at 90% of the cost. Mine doesn't. The total cost. And then it needs to ask me to ask an over-adjusted meeting to tell them. Wait a minute. You know, we can't hear. Wendy, you go back to the point you were about to make. Do you have some highway? I think so, yep. Those are really not negotiable, so you have a lot of options on that. Yeah. Just to make sure Ron can hit, it's 891-433.45. Got it. Okay. All right. So down under the appropriations, I've added work on community television. What's the amount of support to be donated to them? We're not doing that. Yeah, we actually, they didn't request anything from us, so we took that out when we met on Saturday. Yeah, I have to get with you, Wendy, and update the social services appropriation stuff. I've done it on the warning, but I haven't done it on the spreadsheet. So what I can do probably is just send you the warning and then you can get some of the numbers. I can. Okay. You probably noticed I put in a little calculator down at the bottom for your tax rate. I didn't notice. Is it, I made two assumptions. I made the assumption that non-tax revenues for 24 would be similar to 23. What are those things? It's like the pilot that you get from the state and the state is a highland and all that kind of thing. You know, for fees, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, so they're in line 357. Yeah. Wendy, can you translate total agreement that total, the total municipal rate, 84, that's 84 cents per, what is it? Or is it 85 cents? What? So you've got the calculation for the current budget year, right? Yeah. Which was, do you see that in column E? Is that the 0.76? Mm-hmm. That's your current, that was the tax rate you got set back in July or October. Right, for this fiscal year, 0.23. Right. But you know, the total. The total anticipated was gonna have $316,000 of revenues that were not taxes. To take the amount, you need the total amount of your budget plus the warrant articles, which for fiscal year, 0.23 was 1.883 million, right? No, I don't know. And you can track the anticipated revenue. 0.65. That would go to office, the tax rate would blow a little bit, right? Mm-hmm. And the net amount to raise in taxes for fiscal year, 0.23 was just under $1.63. You can see that at the bottom, right? Yeah, yeah. In column D. Your municipal grand list, that's divided by $150 in order to make the calculation work. You know, you have grand list. Yeah. You can divide $1.00 a value. Okay, so that's what I wanted to know. So that is, the municipal tax rate is 80, 84 cents for $100 of value. But there's an adjustment to it that your town has agreed to because of that. Yeah, 85 cents. So, that's the tax rate. Right, so the total municipal tax rate could be 84 cents. 84.5, it's 85 cents. 85 cents per $100 of value. So we can't get out of calculations. That's essentially the term. 80 cents, please. Well, it's going from like 84 cents to 85, per 100. Wait, I'm confused. It's going from 72 cents to 77 cents. Oh, of course. Yeah. And that is a 9.5% increase. That's a lot. So if you own a $250,000 property, last year you paid, last year you paid, so Wendy, 250, that's how many- Take on two zeros. Oh, it's one zero. I have to, 2,500, hundreds, times 0.7703 is, okay, so last, if you had a $250,000 property, last year you paid, 1925. Yeah. And then this- 1925, almost 1926. And then this year- I'm going to call it 1926, yeah. And then here, 20, what, I just did, so it's almost a $200 difference in your taxes, which is, so it would be 2,125 roughly for apple 21. Yeah, 2,118 is what I got. Yeah, okay. So, another, yeah, so, or 80, said another way, 85 cents minus- $192 more, based on the proposed budget that you have in front of you right now. So $8 per, $8 increase per $100 property value. And that is if all the articles pass, the social services, that's everything. Right. But- It does not include school taxes, everyone knows. It doesn't include school taxes, I guess. And I heard school taxes might go up as much as 9%. School taxes are 75% of the budget on average. 9 to 11% increase through the school. So what we've done historically is a couple of things. We have, we don't have it cut out this way, I didn't have time to do that, I really wanted to. What we've said to ourselves is the things that we can really control are the town office, you know, Slick Ward and the Slick Ward and town office and the highway. We don't really control the fire and rescue. Either money's not player or we're married. That's right. Even though they're added into our numbers above. So we could take a few minutes to cut them out and redo the tables so that we can see what it really looks like. But with those in there. So we're looking at, what did you say, Mark? 9%? Not a point, not a. But that's with social services. That's with everything. That's not what Sharon said. It includes fire and the fire. It includes fire and includes special services. Our budget, including fire, is a 10% increase with the numbers we have in now. So. What's far, you did say, Sharon, something I didn't understand but was really important. You said when we were just looking at our budget, not the road budget, the general fund budget. You said don't panic because there's, you know, it was like $200,000 difference. Hold on, actually, let me take that back. When I just, so if you have the tables up in front of you, I lied a second ago because we do have, we, yay, a couple of years ago we didn't. Now we do have this spreadsheet set up so that we have a tally on general government and highway expense, which is what we have said is within the control of this board. We have that tally with the fire departments and the social services, both not in. What line? Yeah. 296. 296, yes. Is what we are in charge of. Now, why did it go down? It didn't, it went up. budget 23, $250,000. That was just highway here. Highway, I'm seeing. Look at total 1.48, 1.48. To 1.636, so it went up 10 and a half percent. What we are in control of is in this spreadsheet is up 10 and a half percent. So this is, and it doesn't, so that again, just to repeat myself, doesn't include special articles, which we generally just put forward the way people ask for it. People can vote yes or no, and then it doesn't include fire and ambulance. You know, Kellogg-Harvard Library is $30. Right, that's a flat number. Special articles come to $61,000. So on the part that we're in control of is we went through it, the first area that occurred to me to ask ourselves, this is the question. You know I'm an advocate for reserve funds for obvious reasons. One position we could take if we want is that this year was an extraordinary year because of the 8% inflation rate, which we were dealing with in so many different areas here. It reflects in a lot of different ways. And maybe this is a year when we cut way back on what we couldn't reserve because we, just this was a year we couldn't do it. I don't think see things changing. It won't change very much. No, and we've done that before. I was gonna say we have cut back. We've done that before. We've done that a few years in a row. We already said that last year. Another extraordinary year. Woo! I mean, and then we cut back, if we cut back on conservation fund, we've done that several years. We've done that with the... And it's already behind. And we're already behind and we don't ever get caught up. You know, people can make amendments from the floor at town meeting as soon as in person to reduce things or to increase, which we might see. We might see that. Given some of the places where we have not made increases. Well, you know, we can look at the standard, whether you like it or not, whether we agree with it. The standard employee contribution for health insurance around the state, probably around the country, is 15 to 20%. I was gonna say, yeah, we're... Our employee match is 10. Right. And we had discussed that when we had union negotiations. Before. Upping that in trade and all this stuff. So I calculated, you know, a year on a family plan, it's just shy of $25,000, our share. For one person. For a family plan. For one person with a family plan. No, for a family plan, our cost for a family pay, that means three or more people. Right, no, I understand. Oh, one employee. One employee. Yeah, so we had two employees, that's $50,000. And Wendy, I think was basing some of her figures on, we might likely get a charger, DPW, wanting a family plan. Right. You know what, what we keep hearing, both at the union negotiating table and even in discussions in this room, right down to Scott's plea today, there seems to be a lack of recognition time and again, that we provide a greater, we pay a greater share of the benefits. We have an extraordinary benefit plan. One of the benefits. And it goes unrecognized time and again, time and again. In fact, that's what killed the union contract with the highway department, because the highway guys, or one of them anyways, no longer kept ignoring it, despite his union negotiator, putting the spotlight on it. You need to understand, this is if they increase, if you increase your contribution to insurance plan, that's gonna reduce your net in terms of your paycheck. Ignore it, ignore it. And when it came right down to literally signing the contract, he went through the numbers and then they understood. Right, and then he was like, no, no. And the problem is, when we're generous there, it's this hidden cost to the town. It's a hidden benefit, except to the person collecting or paying. Well, you don't realize the benefit to you need it. And maybe we need to make it more transparent and maybe the employee pays more of their insurance and then the savings that we get on insurance, we then put on pay. I'd rather, I'm starting to think that's where we need to move it, because then folks that come to us and say, hey, wow, they're making good. We're gonna compare apples to apples when we compare us to East Montpelier and where else are we gonna compare it to? Well, East Montpelier, they pay a higher percentage of health insurance. Right, everyone. Yep. So we're not, and it takes so much of our time and effort to do the apples to apples, and no one will sense. So, well, so it's basically holding them harmless, but it does increase the wage to cover the cost. Right, and then it's recognized. So the difference, as I understand it, in our total budgeted, general government and highway expense, am I right? It was 1481 in budget 23. 163 up. One, no, 1637. 1637, okay. So it's $150,000. Right. That is our net. That's the number to keep into account. Okay. Well, if we look at... That was like, what, do you understand what I mean? It's 16. You're done with the whole thing. The whole thing. I'm just saying, what's our target number? So if we wanted to cut, it's not like it's an infinite amount. If we wanted to reduce, if it's 150,000 bucks, it's 10%, right? That means 15,000 bucks for every percent, right? So if we want to get from 10%, let's say down to five, for example, or six, we would have to come up with 75,000 bucks. Or 70,000 bucks. Right. Okay. And in place, so I just want to know, what's our office? Well, I want to look at, Mark, can I point something out? Yeah, please, I'm... Yeah, so while you look at that, I want to just point out to people because we have reshaped positions. We have had a treasure, we've had the treasure position open for a really long time. We've recognized the need for some support for the select board. We've had various ideas of how that all comes together. We moved the treasure position into the select board position section. As well as the DPW. And we moved the DPW up. The visual result of that, take a look at line 22. Yeah, you know, it's really big. Is that the select board's budget is going from 59,000 to 206,000. Right, right, but it's right because of the salaries. Right, but if you... I just think we should be aware of that visual and ask ourselves whether we're comfortable because it creates a sitting duck. And also, if you notice, if you notice that comes out to exactly $150,000 difference and folks are gonna assume that the net increase is a result of that. But it's right. So maybe we should move those positions back out so that it's less difficult for visual input and put the DPW down under highway? Yeah, yeah. Maybe. What'd you say, Wendy? That's what I recommended. I know you did, but we had to... We're slowing the uptake, Wendy. No, we had to work through it, Wendy. But Wendy, I mean, it's not... I'm gonna stand by, we're correct given that that position has much broader authority than just highway. It does, it totally does. But visually, we're very vulnerable to people not understanding and getting... Particularly when you consider the conversations we've had around some of the other requests people have made. The visual makes me really uncomfortable. Well, I said... A quick question that doesn't have to do with that. It might be an easy thing. Yeah. Which makes no sense to me because the total contract you had with Sullivan and Powers was $17,000 or something and it's up under flight form. I don't know why the $4,000 budget is there. Where is that? What line is that, Wendy? In my know, it's line 15, and it's under audit, there's a line for town auditors. You guys don't have internal auditors anymore. No, so that's $7,000 that we could. Then why an FY20? No, we have to leave the town before it's stuck in. Doesn't make sense to me. And what I agree moving there is the professional audit. I've reached the $17,000 from select board down into this line for town auditors. That's a really good idea. I like that. Yeah, yeah, I do too. Okay, so move. Okay, I'm gonna make that move. That's line 14. Wendy, are you working in this? You're working in a different spreadsheet than I am, right? So she'll send it to us. So line 14. I'm only looking for one. Are you... But you're not in the drive. No. No. I'm only looking for one. We move 14 to 53. Well, that's a good one. I'm gonna relate and replace that $4,000 amount with $17,000 and take it out of the select board. Yep, Sharon's doing it for you right now. I'm doing it too. Well, this is how we should both do it because that's been the check. Yeah. So that dropped $4,000 for the cost right there. Right, and moves the $17,000 out of the select board to go down to the auditor. And which is where it should be. Right. Why, we make money having hired you, huh? Not literally, because that's something I put in the original idea though. I'm just kidding. All right, so I'm taking the town auditor out and now I've just made a mess of my overall tallys but we're gonna keep going. So. Oh, I got the tally gone, don't worry. He wants to move the treasurer, business manager, town administrator down to the treasurer salary. I think we should. Yeah, I think we should. Yeah, I think we should. Yeah, I think we should. I agree. Visually, we're gonna. And then let's see where we're at with what's the, can you go up? Yeah. I mean to be a backseat driver. Yeah, that'll make a difference. We're just moving it from one place to another. No. Visually, it tells a different story. Well, it's an easier story to tell. Right. Now why, so, okay. So then where are we with? And then if you want to move the director of public works to highway, I can do that too. I just don't need to re-calculate the payroll taxes and benefits for each general fund and highway that won't take me that long. Do people want to move the- Okay, wait, appointment. So now our FY24 budget for FY24 for the select board is 123. What was it? Yeah, it was 123 and $80. Right, and what was it before? Before we moved it to 200. Before we moved those two things out, what was it? Well, the two things went down were 17,000. Yeah, it was 206. Yeah, 56,500. I just slid over to the other side. The goal of 18,000 is $500. So Wendy, in the old tabs, the exact number of what that line was is two, the whole select board section was 206. Yeah, 206. And then what's 123? 123, well, and then we moved the DPW and that bumps it down another 80. And we moved DPW, so do people want to do that? That brings it back down to the 50. Okay, so with the changes we just made, with the changes we just- That wasn't associating anyway. Hang on. It changes the bottom line by $83,000. No, no, I changed the bottom line by the difference between 4,000 and 17,000, which is 13,000. No, no, no, no, no, Wendy. The core department's doing another. We're in a different, yeah. We're on select board. Denise just moved the select board. It dropped $4,000 out of the cost for the general fund. Right, right. So in my spreadsheet, when I took the line out, the previous numbers come out as well, FYI. So, right, because we've had that budgeted in our section before. Right. So now- So Sharon, you should have $17,000 under audit. Right. Right, but we also did- So 4. But we also moved the treasurer's wages. Yeah, but that's okay. You just moved it from one place to another. Right. So what you should have for your total budgeted general fund expenses right now. Wendy, hang on. 741, 65. Wendy, under audit, I have 17 for the professional audit and 3,000 for the town report. So the total- You got it. The total audit is 20. Okay, and so what was the number you just said on a different section? 24 now with the $4,000 drop is 741. But hang on, before we get there, because- It's all gonna still- It's still gonna be all in the general. 741, that number, the bottom line in the general fund. Right, the bottom line isn't gonna change. Isn't gonna change. We're just moving the numbers around. We're just moving the numbers around. No, it dropped by $4,000. Right, right. That's the only change. The $4,000 internal audit. It's like you got rid of the $4,000. Wendy, give us three minutes to make the changes we wanna make. Okay. To just look at it differently. Yeah, and then we'll come back to overall, because we're not in cutting. We're just generally, if you have other thoughts on cutting, let's just hold the thought and give us a couple minutes while I check into the board on moving the data. That's the only recommendation I've had for cutting because it seemed like an obvious justification to me. That's the only one. All right, so guys, let me just, we'll go back to DPW and the idea of moving DPW out of select word back down to highway. I mean, that kind of takes us, what did we have budgeted for highway for the road commissioner last year? What did we budget for road commissioner last year? Yep, she did. I'm very kind of gonna let you find that number and I'm just gonna say where I am. Road commissioners' wages for FY, FY 23 were 71.60. So what we're doing is putting in the DPW position, which is, what did we say, 70 or 80? It's 80. So if we put in 80, that's a $10,000 difference from last year. Yeah, yeah, in the salary for a very different position. I don't understand why director of public works. Well, he'll be in a partial here. Oh, that's right. We paid him a little bit, that's right. Yeah, we did pay him just a little bit. Then it's coming into the auditorium. Can I make a recommendation on this with the DPW director just for your part? Sure. That's the director of public work. Although they're going to manage the grant and they will probably do some oversight of the other town property, which they're going to write town office and town office. No, there's no swimming fund, swim area. There's another town for us. Right, trails, yeah. All right, so there's some other properties to look after, but most of their time, I would say, is highway because most of your grants are highway related. But what you could do is after a year, figure out how much of that person's time was spent on highway related activities and how much was spent on general fund related activities. Yeah, we could. But actually make a transfer. You could expend it all in highway, but then make a transfer from the general fund, or you could even get estimated at this point and actually budget the transfer from general fund highway to compensate for the highway burden. We did this in the town I used to work in because the DPUB commissioner, we didn't have a separate highway fund we had a streets department in general fund. But this person also managed modern sewer. So his whole salary was in general fund, but we acknowledged that all of his activity was not general fund. Can we, Wendy, staying with that thought, is it permitted to split the budget in two sections? Director of Public Works. That gets messy. You're going to have to do it by way of transfers. So, so we would put, so, so Wendy, would we put in a line item under the select board budget transfer to DPW or say, huh, transfer to highway? So, you figured out that this person was going to be 50-50? Probably not, but let's say it was for kids here. Well, 50% of the salary and benefits would be a transfer from general fund in a highway, but all the expenses would be in highway. So highway wouldn't get hit so hard for activities that really didn't belong there. Yeah, I see what you mean. I think that's a good idea. I think, so, but on this spreadsheet, Denise's question was whether literally on this spreadsheet, we show it and I didn't, I heard no on this spreadsheet. No, I didn't say yes. No, she said it gets messy. You could. No, you said, you said we could put in a line item under select board budget transfer out to highway for DPW or something, right? Right, well, you could put it in another spot if you felt it was a place that was also applicable. I mean, where you put it in your budget if you want to do that transfer, I think what I might do is wait until you have a year of experience, or at least six months or so, with a position to understand what that transfer would be. So, but if we're talking about doing something this year, we could just pick a number out of the air, right? To say that we, we, You might have a good read on what you think it would be. Is it 40, 60, is it 30, 70? I think it's more like 30, 70. Well, the bottom line is the person's going to submit one amalgamated time sheet. Well, I think I know the time sheet would be split into. We're going to have building codes. What, what is, what is done for the highway? Don't go down that road. Don't go down that road. What is done for the highway? In one fund or another. Right. And so it comes again, you make a determination how much of that person's time on approximate to spend in the other fund where it's not expensive and do the transfer. It's just so clean. It's so easy. You go putting up time sheets between funds. No, we're not doing that. But, but Wendy, what you're talking about, let me just say what I understand you're saying. My understanding of what you're talking about when you talk about a transfer is something that happens behind the screen in NEMRIC somewhere in the accounting system. No. Okay. It's kind of like a reserve fund. You already have budgeted transfers here. Yeah, we already have reserve funds. You've got all these budgeted transfers to your reserve funds, right? Yeah. So this budget goes every year, like to the technology budget, $5,000. Because you want to build that up. Okay. Their transfer is no different. So if it's up to me to make that happen and make that money move on your board. But so it has, so it has. Being clean. So it has. You have a line in your general fund transfer to highway and being put for director, you know, or something, so you know what it is. So let's say it's $3,000. Wendy. So you would transfer $3,000 to highway to support or supplant the total cost of the director that sits in highway, even though all of their activities aren't related to that fund. So Wendy, I am less concerned or focused for purposes right now on all of the transfers in the back end and very much focused on what does this look like in this budget spreadsheet that we're building that gets printed in the town report. So. If you want to stop for a little on the select board section, this is one of the ways to do it. So what I was asking you a minute ago is can we split it between the select board section and the highway and you said, no, that gets messy, but. Well, no, but when I thought you were asking me and I thought someone was asking me to actually on a functional basis split up their paycheck every week. No, no, no, no, no, no, not at all. Please don't do that. No, no, no, I'm just asking on this spreadsheet, can we show, if we agree that it says Denise suggested 70, 30, can we budget 30% in select board and 70% down in highway. Right. Is there any reason to not do that? This is what I have, I would raise it. I would put 100% of the expense in highway with the 30% in the select board budget as a transfer out to highway. Yeah, and then. That way, you've covered it all. Oh, I see, yeah, yeah. That's what I thought, yeah, that's what I thought. And you acknowledge. I see what you're saying. I think that makes sense. So when we sit in the line that is director of public works grant coordinator and the general government select board, is the budget FY 24, is it 80% or it's sorry, 80,000 times point, if it's times 33 is $24,000. Did we put $24,000 in line seven and then put the rest down in highway? So we would say director of public works grant coordinator transfer. Two lines here that I didn't understand. It was grant coordinator director and then director of public works. One of those lines needs to go. Doesn't matter which one. We have. I would take out number seven, assess the duplication with a week instead of budget amount. Right, that's what it used to be called. Right, that's an old placeholder. That's the end. Now, I just want the $4,000 up to that line, or do you want to leave it director of public work? See this 11, 250 that we budgeted for this fiscal year was grant coordinator. Right, it was grant coordinator. We took that, we supplemented, can you hear me? We made, we took that money when we were figuring out a budget for the DPW because it was going to be a mixed position, we took that 11, 250 and put it in what we were using for to pay the DPW. So that 11, that grant coordinator can just be gone. Well, except for the fact that we have to keep the history. But we didn't pay anybody. No, but we budgeted. Now, to balance out the transfer question, you also have to acknowledge that that budgeted transfer is going to be a residue to highway that will offset the car. So we could reflect that in my way as a contract, that's if you want to, as the salary line, to transfer in from general fund. I think I need your share of the question. Well, it does, however, there's nowhere else that we do that. Yes, you're right, we show money that is budgeted in reserves, but we only show one reserve line. We don't show that money is coming in as a credit in what goes in the town report. But this is different because we've created a position that is partially highway and partially other services that we need. So this is the first time we've had to think about this. I like the idea of putting something in under the select board budget that is what we know we're going to transfer to highway. I agree with you. I'm just stuck on what does it look like to show a credit down in highway. To me, it looks like budgeting the rest of the $80,000 down there. Well, why can't you just? If you're budgeting the whole amount, you're taking out whatever the 30% is, right? So you're just subtracting that, and it would be the whole amount. We could just go back to just showing 30% of it here in general fund and 70% over highway. And keep it simple. And keeping all the benefits in highway or something. Yeah, that's fine. And that's fine. That's why we want to do it. Isn't that what's confusing now? I mean, I would think I actually, I mean, I personally think we ought to keep it one place. The salary around it. And then back out the percentage whenever we set that to 30% and do the transfer. I don't like, I think that does compute money is it by having a salary in two places. And then you've got it. When you look at the budget, you think, you don't look at the right line item, you're saying it's only a $24,000 job. I mean, that's, I'm a fan of simple. Well, I think this is simple. And I think it helps with transparency because we know the position isn't full-time highway. But wait, I just heard two different things, Denise. I thought when you said if you have two different numbers, it looks like it's only $24,000. Right, but if you put up here under the director of public works, and then if we can put some kind of wording in that shows that this money will be transferred to highway, can you, what would the wording be one day? It would be a transfer out. But you know, the more I think about it, I think the easiest thing, honestly, is to put it into highway. And because remember your budgeting, your general fund, your highway, all in one number basically. Okay. The bottom line is one number. Yes. So if it wasn't here in Blackboarding to go over highway, your budgeting would be in the same amount. Or you know, what I mean, total. And you could make that transfer. I don't think it has to be a budgeted transfer because you already accounted for the person's full salary and full benefit in one fund. Right, that's right. Making sure that there's some piece of it that the highway would get on top of their budget. To make sure that then you could do that transfer on your own, just to say, because that's a matter of accounting. It's not a matter of budget. But Wendy, how can we word it in the budget that people understand that? Because we've gotten slammed big time with people thinking that this position was created for various reasons, just for highway. And it was never, that was never the intention ever. Okay. So the reason why the transfers out, maybe I spoke to him, the transfers out to the reserve fund are shown in the budget because those are actually going out to a different fund that's not your budgeted. Okay. But this is like transfers going from one budget in front to a sister budget in front, all in the same follow-up. Management. If we do a transfer to the DPW director. So, I mean, you could show it here, but then you have to reduce it in the other budget to make that sense. But I think that's going to be too confusing for people. I think I would choose one or the other place to keep the salary and the benefit. So John's suggesting that he just, I think what I heard that you just whispered to me is make a new section. Right. And put management or something like that. Why can't we just create a new section, Department of Public Works? Whatever it's called, management, Department of Public Works. I was thinking more broadly in case we want to fit select board assistant under there. Or so we call it, I don't know, come up with another name. I think we just, right now, I think that's right. But if you call it DPW, then, you know, this whole thing, everyone's looking for a reason to attack us based on labels, remember? We were told that's a bad label. You should change it to this. And that's not what the person does, you know? So I was taking a broad category that we could fit under not only the DPW person, but the select board assistant, you know, management assistants or something like that. And it's about the DPW, put the select board assistant. Well, why not put, you know, put the treasurer under there too. Let's create a new section instead of town treasurer. Call it management and put the town treasurer and DPW under that category. You know, town management. You're managing budget treasurer. You're managing select board administrative stuff. That's like board assistant. You're managing the public works of the town, the town beach, the island, the lawns, the buildings, the building maintenance. Oh, yes. And there's a level of oversight of the highway. Town business and management, something like that. Town business. Town business and management. Budget and management. I still worry about the visual of those two positions being lumped together. That's what I'm saying. Well, I was thinking of a sweet treasurer, as Denise said. Yeah. Treasurer, select board assistant, DPW, they all go in there. Well, select board assistant is budgeted with the treasurer. With the treasurer anyway. So those two positions that we have, I and Anne have said are full-time, very busy jobs, particularly if the road commissioner becomes a volunteer person and we don't have that management. Well, you know, that's still, that's $150,000 and the visual of that compared to some other things in town. It makes it, to me, it makes it really, it makes it, it's just, this is just not gonna be fun. Maybe no matter what we do. You know what? Under, if we said town management, delinquent tax collector goes under there. The treasurer, business manager goes under there. Assistant treasurer goes under there. DPW goes under there. And the stipend for the road commissioner, whatever we decided to want to pay. I think the road commissioner. The select board member does that. Right, there's a select board member or somebody else that's the road commissioner. They get, we give them a $2,500 a year stipend. And it's all in one place. Yeah. And then it comes out. And what place is that? A new place. A new category. What we're doing is creating. A new category in general form. Okay, you see what it says, town treasurer? Yeah. Change that to town management. No, no, town, town, what do we call it? I agree. I think you should keep the treasurer piece together because it's the finance office. Well, we'll call it finance and management. Office of finance and management. And then. I know, right? So instead of town treasurer, it'd be finance and management. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Well, we can see what it looks like. Budget and finance and management. Finance and management. And under that is all the stuff that's under treasurer. Linguin tax collector, stipend for the road commissioner. And the DPW. Are you in my way? You made that. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. But we should put in a stipend for the road commissioner. Assuming that it's gonna be. I volunteer. I honestly think you guys that the more that we can apply a keep it simple principle, particularly while all of these positions are still aspirational. We haven't hired anybody. The more that it can look like what people expect and we can explain it in a reasonable context. If we have a, we're gonna have to explain this in town, in town meeting. Right. And I think you really want to keep it in a highway. That's where people, if I were a tax payer in your town, I would be expecting this position to be in highway. Even if they had other degrees. I would rather explain that, you know, unfortunately under budgeting principles, we have to put it somewhere. And it's a very, it's a big job with a lot of responsibility in highway. Yes, that's all we've always said that is not redundant to the road commissioner. At least it wasn't created to be. It has that person has responsibilities in other places but to keep it simple and keep it in one line, we put it in highway. We call it highway and public works. We could call it highway. And then that covers it. And then same thing with the treasurer and the more that these things look, look like what people are expecting to see, we're changing the job on the edges. We've changed the title under treasurer, business manager, town administrators so that we're covering the idea that this is an evolving position. But once we have people in those positions and folks in town get used to the idea of what their responsibilities are, why we have that, that it actually is a big job to do. In a couple of years, I think it would be easier to create this new section and move numbers around when people have a concept of what these jobs are. Right now they're just a slight board vision that we've put on paper and it's aspirational and trying to explain lots of big changes. We've already been through what that feels like to explain big changes. It won't be aspirational once we budget it officially as line items. But it's aspirational in that we haven't hired those people and nobody has a visual at what it really looks like and feels like. And the kinds of changes we're talking about will be easier when people understand what those positions are like, how they work together, how they manage our town. They have people and faces attached to them. Right now it's still a vulnerability for us because we are the ones who are most experienced when it's like not to have that. And the town office, if they were here, they would be like, wait, we are two. They are two, Wendy is two. Right. Well, can we go, so can we call highway where it's the wages and that part, can we call it highway and public works? Actually, you could rename them all. Well, that's what I'm talking about, too. Highway and public works, yeah. And I totally agree that the 80,000 position and its benefits along here in highway. And that would explain the very reason that you talked about. Isn't that what it is? And you've gotten used to this and you know how much of their time is being spent on them, then you can figure out a different option. Well, and when people understand it generally. So we're talking about which line, Denise, are you thinking about? We're not talking about where it says general highway. Why not? I'm meaning that to highway and public works. 187. General highway and public works. Where I just did it, do you guys know the change? Okay. Why is it twice though? It's always been there twice. It's a bigger section. If I would put highway and public works, I'd give it a general. It marks a bigger section. I was underneath that, we have general highway. Right. And then you've got benefits and some other things, road maintenance or subsections. That works. I just want to be clear. Okay. Because we've got so much flack for creating this position because people didn't understand what it was. Right. And if we don't make it a little bit more clear than budget, they're going to say, see, told you. All right. So I'm going to move the 80,000. I'm going to delete line seven. And I'm going to create a new, we're going to... We're going to calculate the benefits, and I can give you those numbers when I'm done. Okay. Is this to do that? And it's not, yeah. And it's not going to change our bottom line. So director of public works, I'm going to change this to... The 80,000. Well, in the language to say, what was it called? Grants. Director. Public works and grant coordinator. Yeah. Grant administration or something. Grant administration. What did it say? Can somebody get a pie? Can you look back up? Yeah. Director of public works, grant coordinator. Grant coordinator. Okay. Okay. So I made 192, say director of public works, grant coordinator, and... Yeah. I'm going to get to work on the other piece here. It's not going to change the bottom line though, right? The bottom line for both funds together, no, we'll not change it by a penny. Right. But I just need to give you the new allocations for the payroll taxes and benefits for each fund. Yeah. That's what I'm looking on right now. Okay. So in the meantime, I'm going to delete that row. Okay. So let me give you a shout out. So what was our select board budget last year, apples to apples was $44,000, $10. And now it's $43,000 and $80. So we have accomplished the goal of making more clear that we didn't just create a big old windfall for the select board. Right. Now we just need to find places where we might make some cuts. Now we still have to make cuts. In markets, my ideas, right? Yeah. In markets, I'm not mad. That's what I've been working on. I mean, I keep them in here and I understand and I'm completely agree with what we've done. Please understand, these are nothing more than suggestions to give you an idea of where we might come up with the kind of thing. Okay. So I'm just going to run through. So where do you get the reputation of being a slash and burn? Yeah. Can we have a break? Would people mind a five minute break? I think it's a stretch of my fingers. Is that all right for Wendy? Wendy, we're going to take a quick break. I applied. All right. And that is all right. Number for the 10, 13 from. Because I understand. Okay, yeah. So we applied to the CPI. Overall. Overall. To all positions. Well, no, no, no, no. No, we haven't applied it to everything. We've created a contingency. All right, the contingency. Because in me and the... If you look in the highway, there's a contingency fund. That's right. Because we're negotiating with the union. We can't say what they increase it's going to be, but we can try to think ahead a little bit and just kind of apply that same overall amount. All right. So that's where that came from. What I did here, I'm just going to say your context again. We're going back to Marce's ideas for cutting. All right. Okay. Great. I'm just going to run through a real quick. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. I cut legal from 25 to 20. I cut the auditor four. I cut technical, I cut out the technical... Wait a minute, Mark. We didn't know. He acknowledged his power. He took out the four. He took out the four that we already took out. I took out the technical reserve of five. Just cut it. I took out the town hall reserve from 10, line 159 or something, from 10 to five. I took the... And that gets me essentially five, 10, 15, almost at 20,000. Okay. Then there's some more. I don't know if there are kind of sense. I cut the list of wages, which we took from eight to 12, to 10 instead. That's two. I cut the advertising, which we took it way up from 500 to 5,000. Said, well, maybe we're not going to spend the whole year doing it. Took it to 3,000. That's another two. So that's 20, 23, something like that. Okay. What I did is I went through every line where I saw a big difference. Then I asked, could we do anything with that? And didn't end up, I ended up with 23,000. I agree. Advertising is, I don't know why I can't find them. So where would we come up with the rest? At the only place that I could think of was to say a huge amount of our increase is the 10-wheeler and the F600, which we put in the capital budget. And I said, okay, well, what if we borrow some of that? We don't want to do it. In fact, it's the exact opposite of what we want to do, right? We don't want to borrow money. We want to, in fact, put away money, right? But we ain't there. So I said, okay, so borrow 50K. Well, well, and we don't have to. And so borrow 50K, and that takes you to 73,000, my goal was, could we get a 76% from 10 to six? Well, 10 to six means coming up with 60,000 bucks. So do we have a highway reserve fund, is that right? Yeah. No, we've zeroed it out, I think. Well, it's 20,000 line. 244. Well, what do we do? But we don't have anything in there. We have no zero. We don't have anything in the highway. I had zero in the reserve fund. Right, and what has happened in previous years, if we have leftover highway money, we would put it into this reserve fund. So, and then right now it's showing that there's 20,000 in there. Right, and so it's lines, lines 290 or something, 290 in the 290s rip. Hang on, hang on, let's go back. I don't want to lose this point. The highway capital reserve fund. We budgeted for the first time this year. We budgeted 20,000, but Denise, you just said there's 20,000 in it. Those are not the same thing. Well, they will be. They will be, that's it. But hang on, if we've rolled money over a year over year, extra leftovers. Whatever the extra you have, there should be. There is more than 20,000 unless we'd already spent. Yeah, I don't know how much is in there now. Wendy, do you know how much is in the highway reserve fund? I can look it up in a minute. Thank you. Anyway, I was like, what I was trying to do is get us 6%, 6% is a 4% reduction and 60,000 bucks. So I said, I have to find 60,000 bucks. That's one way to find 60,000 bucks. Well, hopefully our legal fees won't be next year what they have been. Right, I just remember them being, when we talked about the legal fees, we kind of went back and forth and back and forth and I said, okay, maybe we'll take 5K up. Well, yeah, I can't talk about legal fees in open session, but I'm anticipating a continued level for some time until things all settle. I think that's going to be another year based on. I don't know the current. But, you know, Rick, you had mentioned, there was some thought between you and the guys on the highway that maybe we don't need a 10 wheeler all the time. Maybe we should start looking at one. Yeah, we should be having an eight wheeler. Yeah, a six wheeler, right? John, I mean, that's what we should have one, at least one six wheeler dump truck as in our inventory because the 10 wheelers are too big sometimes for a lot of reasons for hauling classes that screws up licenses and also just basic mobility in certain places. And the rot end. And there was a resident in John Shadiris for your time. There was a resident, names aren't important, but they live on a smaller road. And they, when we first started going with 10 wheelers, they raised the specter, the concern that, you know, if you go to bigger trucks, you're going to start using that as leverage to widen the roads. And our then road commissioner said, no, that's absolutely not true, as did our operations manager. They're the same with blah, blah, blah. And it was this year, or maybe tail end of last year, that our road commissioner argued that we need to widen roads because we have 10 wheel trucks. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. So, but we may want, not that that's reasonable smart, if the guys think we don't need, if we would be, hope you'll have a smaller truck in the fleet. One time, you're going to want a 10 wheeler, so it will get that time. Right, when you get the ice storm, you have to have 10, you can't have a six wheeler. Because you'll spin. Because you have the extra two axles, extra four sets of chains. And I can take you out on the ice if you want to, with a six wheeler. Yeah. And the 10 wheelers, the 10 wheelers, so much more positive. That's the only good. Oh yeah. I get that. The question is here, do we want to keep a six wheeler in the inventory? That brings the point about, what do you want to do about your cool ride? Right. Well, this is. The cool ride will be in the six wheeler. So this is. That would be. Yeah. And there is an issue, I mean, I think the 10 wheel is hoping you can haul more sand, so you're less trips back to. So the reason I'm asking this and then I'll stop. No, because I want to ask you. Let me just, the reason I'm asking that question is we're anticipating buying a 10 wheeler. Should we and we could save money if we bought a six wheeler? Should we be buying a six wheeler this time? Would save money? It would meet the need that you guys have been thinking about. I mean, I would, what do you, what would you say? I, based on what we've seen so far, we've had conversations before. We could switch out that next. I mean, we couldn't do that. And since we won't buy it any day, we've ordered it. Well, no, no. This is the charm. Yeah, we've got moments being fed up right now. And then we've got the one time that's coming. I'm talking about next. The next question. But in the budget for 24. But we don't have anything budgeted. We don't have anything. We have. Yeah, put it down. 20, 20, 30 West Star. I'm at line two. The old budget, as it was this afternoon. Line two 90 was 42,000. Line two 91 was 30,000. So that's 72,000 bucks. My general impression is that where we have really improved our position is, which I don't think we should cut, is in maintenance and doing all kinds of little things that you found, you know, over time, we've improved, we're improving the garage. We've got, you know, better equipment. We're got eight grand in there for the dust control portable sprayer. Do we really want to go from 45K to 70 for fuel, gas, oil and diesel? Well, we take 5,000 off that. John, let me ask you this question. Dust control portable sprayer and tank. We said we would be looking to buy one or maybe build one. Can you guys build one? You work there to see if you can build it. And do you think the cost would be half to 8,000, like 4,000? I'm not certain. You'd have to talk to Peter. We still have to outside it with a tank and a brand new pump and all that. And he would basically be building a frame to hold all that. Okay. Do we really, can we take 5,000 or 10,000 bucks off that? 45 to 70? I don't know. It's a crapshoot on what fuel prices are. That's a pretty quick question. It's all crapshoot. I guess that's a way up. That's a consumable for us that we have to have. Right, yes. Well, and in FY22, we spent 66.9. Oh, really? My question. Really? Where's that? Oh, yeah. You're right. Yeah, I guess not, Mark. That's already 67,000. So anyway, that's why I liked a lot of the raises. I did it in here. I'm just wondering, how much can we do? Is there a way we can just say, well, some of the things here, we're going to borrow some, that's why I thought we'd borrow them. We borrow some money and then next year we pay it off if we can't. Well, before we go there, kind of there's one consumable, I want to ask John about, you know, is sand, because we've got an excess of sand right now. And we spend about 65,000 on sand. Oh, really? I mean, I'm wondering this year if we should take, do you think we should cut that? What would you say we've got? I think we got enough sand for next year, too. Really? So do we want to take a... Where is it? You know, take a... Mine's $15,000. Yeah, it's 65,000. Well, in FY22 though, we're getting $109,000. We did, but that's because we have to help you put the excess in. They've got an excess amount of sand. And, you know, we're... And I'm not falling for them. They put that being done. Mainly because with these weather changes, you don't know what it could... There was a year when he was super worried about sand. Yeah, because of the icing. And the ice. Can you guys not do that, please? Well, what my... But the question would be, I mean, if we can cut this back this year, that could help us. So if we... I think Alfie got that much sand this year, because he's worried about the... Yeah. The sand pit closing, and then we'd have to haul further away. Right. So if we... So, yeah. And he was worried about running out of sand, period. So could we cut that down to like half? Cut it in half or something. Would you think that would be reasonable? Which one are you on, Denise? Or on sand? Sand, which is $15,000. Which is $15,000. $15,000. What pit did we get that sand from? Most of it from. Is that the South Barry one? No, it's from the shop. Oh, that one. It was $35,000. That's why he had to put that to get... He had to buy that much to get that price. And what about... $30,000, okay. What about gravel? Gravel we need, right? That's... Right now, I think gravel's gonna be astronomical because we're already in a mud season. And roadside mowing, we need to use the repair, so we put in a $5,000. Not knowing how much that was gonna cost, right? In that... So Wendy, have you come up with a number for what we already have in the capital fund for Highway? Yep, I've got those. Just been waiting for a break for a second. Yep, let me go back. Highway currently has $20,544. You'll be moving another $20,000 into it, but it is under 2023. But that's in your... So that would be a little over $40,000. That's 600 one time to be delivered very shortly. You could pay for that out of the Highway fund. I mean... I mean, it would bring it down to a bit going $10,000. How much is the Highway fund? What was that about? $40,000. Highway put in the fund currently has $20,544. $40,000, you know what I'm saying? That would be transferred into it when I get into the office and do those transfers. So during this fiscal year, it would be half your amount. Well, $40,000, but that truck's about like $140,000 to fit up that one time. Why do we have it? We have it. How much is that truck? It will be something like $140,000 because of it's got a cloud frame, you know, on it. We have it as a budget for $40,000. Okay, so what is the $30,000 budget all about? Hey, you're talking about $10,000. That was an annual... I think on the assumption that we would borrow for it. Right, and borrow, that was the... Okay, so now we're going to hold or the lease of Captain Lisa or whatever it is. I see, so that's the lease. Okay, that's just the pot shot we put in for what the lease, we don't have the lease on. Some of your other ideas, can we go back to... I didn't write them all down. Yeah, go from the top. Okay, from the top. My problem is that I just had the original budget. That's all right, it gets a little close enough, yeah. About 13, legal 25, I cut it down to 20. Okay, so let's talk to each other about cutting our legal budget. So we've had, we're up to 30, we're probably at 35,000 or more by now. John is telling us that for the reasons it's high this year, he anticipates it will continue to be high. Well, higher than flat year. Higher than years when we don't have legal issues that we're doing. Right, and understand, we are halfway through this year, we're at 35, and there's a lot of lifting to get this judge's order implemented. And I don't know if that's gonna, let's say it's a lot of lifting. And it's going to probably be another 20 on top of that. So I'd expect 55, and this is November, it's about 60 grand this fiscal year. I think 25 is probably, unfortunately. Not even enough. I mean, hopefully we resolve everything within this fiscal year, but we're gonna be short. We're gonna be in a red, and we need to pick up some of that red next fiscal year. We can take out select four stipends. Yeah, I've said that year after year, folks. I won't be doing it, take it out. Whatever you want. I always was against it because I feel like $500 for someone who does the amount of work we do. I know, but. And it impacts people's, impacts my finances working on this select board. That's why, that's another reason I'm not running again. Let's put it in, let's. It costs me a lot of money. Let's zero it out. Okay, so that's. You can zero it, it doesn't affect me. I mean, it does, it's affected my businesses. You guys have all heard me say it, but $500 doesn't make it up. No, but it's at least something. I don't keep a tally of how much time I spend. Okay, so that's what you plan on. What's the plan? Well. Just take out the whole stipend. I just put it out on zero. Yeah. Okay. No, I mean, but what was it at? Was that 7,000 or some, was that 7,000? 7,000, yeah. Which was. And also we can, that helps the way the optics. Okay. Yeah. So, okay. So that takes us seven. We're not going to take legal down. No. But we zero ourselves out. That's seven. Okay. Zero out. Our recording secretary wages, we want to leave in. Yes. Here it's like. I'm just looking at it. Yeah, yeah. No, we want to leave that. We'll get differences. Okay. So what else, what other things were you talking about? Okay. The auger is four. Yeah. Can I ask a question? We have 2,400 in webmaster. Right, that's the stipend. I know. We're only paying one person right now. We are, but Jamie I think has found somebody to be an assistant. But why would we, I mean it's not much money, but we're not going to pay two people the same, are we? We have, I mean, Jamie hasn't even brought it to the select board yet, this person. So we'd have to figure that out, even if we just paid $100 a month, that's $1,200. You know what, never mind. I was just doing the same Matthew did the other day and never mind. This is what the number would be. Okay. Just to do what we're doing. It's a child treasure, that's set. The Lincoln's tax clock, that's set. What were your other things, Mark? Check reserve. I took it out. Some good dollars. Just took it out? Yeah. I just zeroed it. I mean, I don't care. So this year. Yeah, for this year. Okay, and wait a minute, but you said something about Lister wages. He didn't, he had nothing. I took the list of wages from 12 down to 10. Mark, what's the line of tech reserve? Okay, we're not saying. I know, I know. Yeah, that's down. That's down further. It's below Listers? Yeah. Okay. Lister's reserve was lying 46 for me. It's probably 44 or 45 or something. Okay. And I have an idea under PC reserve is in here that hasn't been voted on. So you took Listers from 12 to 10? Yeah. Okay, and that makes sense. Well, hang on. They want an increase, don't forget. Now increase. They want to increase. Jan has not running again. Right. Where, has anybody said that they are going to run? She's the only one. Oh, for that position, I haven't heard. I, I, when it comes to, I mean, we, it's three people. We had them at eight and now. No, we had them at 20. At eight. 20, I mean, I'm 20 per hour. 20 per hour, 800 dollars. Right. But we are already. Half into the year. Yeah, and it's, we've got a couple of big years coming up for the Listers. We do. We're re-appraising. I, I'm, I mean, that wasn't a willy-nilly. We talked about that number. All right. Okay. We got a lot. Which by the way, Mr. Representative, I think because it's pretty much across the board every town needs to do a re-appraise. I think this, a legislature needs to do something and just come up with a formulary and just apply a percentage and save us this pain and the money. It's ridiculous. It's insanity. Just applying that. The increase, we know, they do it every time. Everywhere, all the time. Just if, if we weren't, if we were outside of Paris, that's what they'd do anyway. Just apply a percentage. I think what I saw across my desk was one legislator forward of an email saying, this is 100, I don't know how many towns are suddenly in trouble. Right. And the answer came from whomever govops or govops. We got to do something about it. Yeah, they have to. This is insane. Whether they do the right things. And that'll save us money. Okay, cut it. There's no dating on Mark's key. What? You said whether they do the right thing. Yeah. Whether it interrupts committee. Oh, I shouldn't have said that. Okay. So for now we're just leaving. Yeah, I could have said they. For now we're leaving the Listerns as we will. As well. Right? Okay. Advertising. I was thinking, well, maybe. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. So where is, okay, so we've got to scroll down. We're not making, you don't have anything under elections because we can't do a lot about that. We did debate that whether it would be as cost as much to advertise as we thought. You remember? No, you're on. That was elections. You're on general office advertising. Well, elections, you just mentioned elections where we budgeted in the last, but we cut it down to $15. Yeah, I mean, we don't have a budget. We don't have an election. Right, okay. Okay, so now you're down to advertising and we had budgeted. Line, please. Advertising. I had 78, about 76. Five. Five and five. And I just thought 500 to 5,000, well, I know why. Right, we've had a huge budget because of these elections. Right, exactly. But I was thinking, well, supposing that we were a little lucky and it didn't last all year or we still spent another whole year like this last one. So I said, I only cut it 2,000 from 5,000 to three. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, that sounds good. And we're still going to, the bottom line is, when we're, when we need to hire, we're still going to. Well, we have to advertise. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so, and then 91, which would be 88 tech reserves. Oh, yeah, I see. I just said, well, okay, now it's zero. So nothing? Zero, well, you know, the problem is that I was trying to come up. We got to find it. We have to find the money. Yeah, we have to find it. Well, so we already cut it down to, from eight to five. Well, we put in 2,500. Just to put something in there. Just to have something going on. But we have 20k already in there, right? Yeah, but if we, but we got, we messed up before by not having enough money. It's not a lot. Yeah. And we had to take out a loan or something. To buy new servers. Yeah. And when there was a, there's a shelf life on those servers. Where did Cliff tell us five, eight years ago? Yeah. I mean, we're going to. I think we're going to. But folks, remember, if we get the high speed internet, we may be able to dump in the cloud. Cloud. I might be talking through my hat on the IT guy, but if we continually rely on the cloud, we're paying for cloud space anyway. Yeah. We might have to up that, but it might save us a lot of the panic. You know, if the server goes down, well, it's up in the cloud anyway. It's not. I mean, this whole panic, it could break panic. A lot of businesses don't have one site server. Yeah. Right. So I don't think that's improved. You know, we already have 20k in there. Okay. So we're cutting it from five to 2,500 done. And what about the town office? Building users from there's 51, almost 52,000 in there. What if we just didn't put any in this year? I don't like that. And in that kind of building reserve, there's by you later. Right. Well, then cut it in half. We could do that if you want to. Or just put in 2,000 and save 2,500. So that we're being consistent by putting something in every year. Yeah. I'm with you. Okay. 2,000. And I'll leave my note about 1%, right? Even though, I mean, that's the goal. And for building it, even if we have to borrow money later, you know, obviously. No, the other one. We'll just have you do the work for free. Yeah, I'll see you out here. I didn't even know what to do with this line. What? 1,843 for me, which would be 139 for you. Invasors. Oh, that's the question. It went from zero to 15,000. That's a while ago. I mean, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let's go back up to planning commission reserve fund. That will be a warning. And maybe we don't do 5,000. Maybe we do 2,500. You know, this thing with Marcus. Marcus is amazing at finding that monies. Who? Marcus Bradley, Darby's son is the forester that the conservation commission is in conversation with. Red start. Red start, he's my forester. He is, he knows where all the monies are, turns out NRCS, it's amazing. And maybe the conservation commission could do their own little due diligence and contact NRCS. They have invasives funding all the time right now for farms. Really? Farms. For farms. But I don't know if there's a program out there just generally because invasives don't respect property needs. I want to go back. I can answer that question. Oh. Go. NRCS is to serve producers. Is what? To serve producers. It's a situation of a place in USDA but not there for municipalities. Yeah. Maybe R&D instead. Who is that? Development. Oh, we'll do that. Is it a commission of USDA? Okay. Okay, so. NRCS is, it's really set up to serve producers. Okay. So, can we go back to, so planning commission reserve funded. We cut it to 2,000. Why are quick questions? No, no, no, no, no, we jumped ahead. Yeah, we jumped ahead without making that cut. Right. So. Question is, is that there for the Lake Town plan? Yeah, they asked for a reserve fund to be established and they asked, I don't remember the full content of the email, but they asked for a reserve fund to be established and for $5,000 to be put in year one. And that is so that they could maybe hire somebody to help them with the town plan. But we've put in $5,000 this year, which I don't think they're going to spend. We put in. The reserve fund that's down here. No, but we, well, when they were looking to hire a PC assistant, so it's, and they've never done that. So they changed it to a reserve fund because if it's in the budget and it's approved and they don't spend it, it just goes back. So if we changed it to a reserve fund and put money in there, it would stay there. So if we put in $2,500 instead of $5,000, at least there's something and it won't get sucked up. Okay, so that, I wasn't sure if that was dedicated to like a, like the town plan because there is a expense that goes with that. We pay, we have to pay. Right, and that's what this is. Okay, okay, okay. All right, so put it at 2,500. 9,500, we're down at 19,000, 20,500, so far we've seen. And the conservation commission has had no luck getting a report in the secretary. They've been doing up the minutes as everybody else does. I mean, it's only $600. Yeah, it doesn't get as much and we're gonna leave our money in basis species control. I mean, for all that we do talking with, you know, the, in various contexts about invasive species and our... Put our money where our mouth is. Yeah, put our money where our mouth is. Can we change it to like 12 or 10? What I'm wondering though is if we have a good, we have the public works department that we wanna have and the road crew that we've got and we have a public works director doing their job, is an invasive species control going to be part of that? It's not control, it's what's described in an inventory. So maybe invasive species control. No, I should say inventory, not control. Yeah, I was just gonna take that. And I think what we learned is we don't have a lot of money in the conservation fund right now. Am I remembering that correctly? Yeah, absolutely, you got it. No, it got burnt when we did the Armstrong farm. But Wendy, how much is in conservation fund right now? 30,000 and the transfer has yet to be made for fiscal year 23, which is another five. And actually, I think it'll bring it up to 30, it'll bring it up to 38, my client told you about it. So with the transfer in, so we're looking at 38, and I know the conservation commission would like us to do even more. And they probably won't be happy if we cut how much we're putting in there. But if we're cutting other things, I just, if we put 5,000, that would be... If I correct that, they have one. They have what? It's a 34, and I haven't made the, and then it's like, what is it, 5,000? So we'll have 39,000 this year. Okay, so if we give them 5,000 as we have for the past two and maybe more preceding years, then they'll be up to 39. And some of the, they're already gonna be at 39. Yeah. Right, they're, yeah, they'll be at 44, and then they've got some money to help with invasive species inventory, right? There's nothing that prohibits that reserve fund from being used for that. So what if we cut? No, the conservation fund has a very specific guideline of what it can be used for. And I'm gonna lobby against this. Against which? Against cutting funding through conservation fund, I think by virtue of the massive inflation on real estate, we already have suddenly seen a cut in the value of that fund. That fund already can't do shit. I mean, if we were in a better year, I would want to see an increase to the conservation fund. I mean, ideally, but the 8,000 is an increase. Oh, you're only increasing the fund? No, no, no, no. That's because we're at eight. We're at eight. They would ideally, I think they originally wanted us to do 10,000 every year. We just couldn't. I mean, if there's something that comes on the market because of all of this inflation, and there's not gonna be enough money in the fund to help with the town's share. I know, that's what I'm saying. And we really depleted the fund when we did the arms farm. That means to be really nasty here. Does that mean that the fund is worthless? So we shouldn't contribute at all. I mean, basically it's not now. No, no, no. I'm not gonna say that. We might beg and plead the housing conservation fund. They'll always be a local share. Well, they want to see a local share. They want to see a commitment. So we have to. And I'm on land trust, I always want some. If they're doing it, they want to. Right, well, if they use the housing conservation fund on me. So. But we always have to have some. They have a formula. Okay, so are you proposing reducing that to eight, five a year in your opposing fund? I don't want to see anything reduction in funding to that. But that's just me. But hang on, when you talk about reduction, for the past two years, we've budgeted a $5,000 contribution. No, I'm okay with eight. I thought you were talking originally about cutting it. Yeah, that's what it was. Well, eight was what we had in there before we had our bottom line. So now, so when you say cut, does that mean you are okay with going to five and level funding as we have over previous years? I don't want to see eight, but. You don't want to stay. That's just me. That's just me. I'm very concerned that I know there are some properties that are looking at right now. And just in the years since they've been thinking about it and it's just been conversation. That's it. Those properties have gone up markedly in value. Well, let's leave it at eight and just keep. Well, let's. We might have to take another going on through this other round. What maybe reduced inventory money to 12 instead of 15. That's a little bit weird. Why maybe it's one 40, it's face of species inventory. Yeah. I mean, that seems like a reasonable place too. We have no clue. Which is not a clue. And that's what the conservation commission was supposed to be finding out. And we don't still don't know. I have an idea. Is that something that our funds could pay for if we took out the 12,000 entirely? I would have to find it out. I think it's a one time expense. It's a one time expense. It's something we haven't normally budgeted for. Well, I've got a call bonding tomorrow to ask for about these other items. And I will ask. I think if your general fund expenses can be used for ARPA. Say what? ARPA rules change. Right. Last about 10 months ago. You were able to use the ARPA money for any of your general government expenditures, except pensions and debt service. So it's going to apply to 15,000 for the invasion. That's a perfect. That's a perfect. ARPA, that's perfect. Does everybody agree? That's a perfect use of ARPA. So then we can take the 15,000 out and just use it for ARPA. Because according to my little chart here, depending on what we do with some of the other money. We have money there. We have a little bit of wealth. So we are now at 35. And then I do have time to wait and get through the actual cost from the opportunity. Right. So we need another 25,000. Excellent. I feel like, last year I said this too, that movie American president. Say, Noi, did you? Where everyone sits around the table, the cabinet, he has the cabinet and they have to pay to buy the child care or something. So do we take the money out of the sand yet? We have 65 in there. Oh, right. No, we haven't got that. We haven't got that far. So we can. Oh, we haven't got that far. I thought that the sand was very, well, not as good as there. That will get it. That's 30,000. You can take 30,000, you're now at 60,000 bucks. Hang on, but let's look at everything. Yeah, right, because we don't want to do things that don't make any sense just because we found money. Well, one thing, if we can do it, if we can avoid, I mean, I know, John, we'd like to start replenishing gravel on these roads. So if we need, would I like to increase gravel? And then if we shift some of the savings to gravel, if we can, let's see how we do here. This might not be the year for it just because of the. So town, I'm on town hall. Does anybody else run that? Okay, so under town hall, we don't think there's anything we can. We don't want to change the reserve fund. No, because that's almost out of money. No, wait a minute. How much is in the town hall reserve fund, Wendy? $5,000. Boom. Absolutely. Well, we're going to be adding six because that's what's budgeted for 23, so it'll be 11. Right. And then if you stick with your budget of 10, next year you'll have four more pounds. Right. Because remember, we just used money out of the reserve fund, Mark, with here. We used money that was in the reserve fund to pay for the shutters. And that was almost 11,000. Okay, but I. We could cut it to seven. So that, I mean, that was sort of the remainder of a capital expense, was left over. The thing you have to remember when you're in budgeted, which is obnoxious, is compared to what? It's always compared to what? Right. And so if you don't cut it here, you're going to cut it somewhere up. What if we put the town hall reserve fund at eight instead of 10? Let's say it's another two. This ultimately means borrowing later if you get out of the way you look at it. I know, but you can't, you have to. I get it, I get it. I don't know what else to do. I know, yeah, it's kind of like the same thing when you're filling in your budget. Well, let's go, I would say, let's go back to Sam for a minute. What I'm hearing is, and then cycle back here for a minute, but if you go to Sam, where is that? It's under Highway. Highway, yeah. Hang on, can we get there though? Let's just, instead of jumping around. Yeah, so we're leaving, so we're leaving. For now, we're leaving the town hall of building reserve at 10,000, which we have ignored the 1% for I think the past two, if not three years. And we've had spent that money down, so we're in. We're keeping our virtue here. Well, but also, Mark, we are in spinning distance of not actually, like the shutters were more than 5,000, right? It was 10,000, almost 11. So what's gonna be in that fund is only enough to pay for another piece of market. The fund is not, it never had time to get big. Right. And it needs that time. Here's the fund for original capital. Yeah, the renovations, yeah. So insurance, there's nothing we can do with that, long-term debt, there's nothing we can do about that. So now we're down, okay, now I'm with you, Mark. We apportioned that amount for the get-down in that number of insurance, there's another 1,000. There is, there's an assumption there. Okay. I don't know if I can, I'm good. They said it would be six months. But anyway, that's not, this is not something. Well, I think 1,000 is six months, I think this is 2,000 a year today. 2,000 a month? No, a year. For the million dollars? For the million dollars. Building and liability, this is not other thing, so. It's not just curves from the end of that line, 161. Okay, so now we're on your highway. We wanna make sure we have money for data, which is the temporary. What is temporary? What is temporary is data. Can I ask a question before you move on to highway? Yeah. Under... We can't do anything about the cemetery. I've asked and asked what their budget is. Okay, I just wanted to make sure the numbers were right. It looks like, oh, this is weighted down at the end. It looks like they've asked for 42 and 20, is that correct? Can we wait till we get there and do highway? Yep. I'm sorry, I thought it was the other general, but he and I don't know about it. Yeah, okay, so highway, so I don't think there's anything under highway general. We've already looked at this. Right. So now we're gonna... We have the update for you on the payroll expenses after we're done with all that. All right, so now we have road maintenance and we have sand. Yeah, we already cut sand to 35. What is road? What is temporary? That's data hopping. It's a temporary... It's a temporary employee. Okay. The question is there, do we... We have trouble with exceeding our hours with our temporary, it's not plow. Do we actually build a new contingency and throw an as needed temp to get us through if we're on these heavy plow times or if ideally we'd like to do this. I don't know if we can do it this year, but this really improves our flexibility. We budgeted 30,000 last year. This year we cut it to 24. I mean the name, a contingency, we don't need a different line. This is for the temporary line. This is for the temporary employees. What are we at? I'm talking about a second temp employee. Right, but you're moving on. We're moving us in the wrong direction. I know I am. I'm just trying to... What is the director of public works? What do you mean? Mark, look, look, is that still there? It's an artifact. No, we moved it back while you were cutting the plow. Got it, okay. We moved it back. Sorry. Nice try, Mark. All right, now what about... This is a clarification. The insurance costs for the seat correspond. Damn, it's estimated at $670 per annum, so... That's what I thought. Three bucks for next year, yeah, okay. Okay, so San, we already cut it to 35. We did. Do you know, how are we, John, on the crack ceiling? We did. Are we good? That contract worked, but I mean, we have 30,000 budgeted in that. We've done something we want to do after the fact reserves and the payments. Right, but we have somebody else do that. I know, but we have to pay for it. Right, so I think we leave it, I think we leave it at 17. Well, the question is, is it... Don't necessarily do it every year, it'll be every other year, but I just don't know if that was cycled through. Ooh, that's dangerous. Okay, leave it, yeah. So on that, so Wendy, if you've been keeping up with us on periods for a year, number 17, where I, our, so what I have as our total budgeted general government and highway is 1.5, or in other words, 1 million... I have not been keeping up, but I wasn't sure the conversation were definite motion. Okay, so what I have is 1,571,456 dollars and 30 cents. See me put all the cash we've been talking about. Okay, what did you say, Sharon? 1 million, so 5,571,456,30. Yeah. It's up from, okay. So I have... Can you repeat that number again? I have 1,571,456, and 30 cents. That's, I have us, we've so far saved about 50,000 bucks. So that's about right. That's pretty, I mean, that's a good one. So the question is... I have before I didn't add any changes yet. And I've got 5,1 million, 571. That's it. I've got 1 million, I'm sorry, 1 million, 5,5,5,040, it should have been. She hasn't added any changes. Yeah. Right? Huh? So that doesn't make sense. Well, what we'll have to do is we're meeting, you know what, we're meeting tomorrow night. It's almost 10 o'clock according to the clock's here and everybody's brain is gonna start to turn to mush. So, you know, I don't know how long the Curtis Pondam thing will go, but we may, and we've already done the agenda, but it doesn't mean we couldn't start. No, no, you're gonna keep going. You know what? We'll continue this. You're the one keeping track of it, right Sharon? Right. Yeah. You said you made your copy and I've already put, I've already calculated the benefits of having moved the 80 to the highway. So I've got to put that in and I'll follow along with your changes and I'll implement them. I'm gonna do that tomorrow night and get them all back out to you. Okay, and what I'm suggesting is that if we could start at six tomorrow instead of seven to have an hour to talk about budget. I can do that. We'll continue this meeting. We'll continue this meeting to six p.m. And if Wendy could be, Wendy, can you be available tomorrow at six? Yes. Well, they were supposed to get this to the designer by end of business tomorrow. I know. Well, we're doing our very, very best, as you know. And I've got Barbara's list and we're gonna be a few hours late. It'll get to her first thing when it's been loading. Right. To we, I mean, how are we, I have more than a year. So let me, can I say something a different way? Mark, I don't remember because I, yeah, I've lost it because I was working in real time in the real spreadsheet. But what I'm showing now is that we're 7% over Yeah, that's about right. The previous year. Yeah, about. I mean, what I have is I see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight cuts. Which is significant. Yeah. Should I list them or not? Mark, if you could list them, I can type and keep up with you. I think pretty much so that I've got it. Well, here's one more validation. I do have, in the notes below under Wendy's math around what that means for taxes, our old numbers had 84 cents per $100, 84 cents for $100 of value. To the tax rate. And then the total when we added in the local agreement, but exemptions was 85. Now we're down to 80 and 82, 81.5 over 75, 76 this year. So, so we're good. So if you can run through them quickly just so I can confirm what I've heard. I just break them down because I just don't think you got it right. It changed what legal fees are now 20. Is that not correct? We didn't change legal fees. No. Okay, no. All right. So we zeroed out stipends for about seven Ks. Got you. We did all the stuff that you talked about and they reduced the order by four. Yeah. Advertising we cut two. Cut it two. Right. But you got to say kind of cut two off. Okay. Yeah. So the total being three then. Yeah. We are taking a lot. Wait a minute. One day has a question. What is your advertising now? 3,000. It will be three after the cut. Right. That's what you meant. Yeah. That's what you meant. Yeah. That's what you meant. Okay. I don't have that. I have the bottom line number. Technical, the tech reserve, we cut 2,500 bucks off to leave it at 2,500. 2,500. Yeah, got it. Building reserve, we cut 2,500 off to leave it at. 2,000. 2,000. Got it. Planning commission reserve, we cut 2,500 off to leave it at 2,500. 2,500. We cut out the invasives, hopefully. Out of conservation commission. Out of conservation commission. Entirely. We zero that out because we're going to use our funds. I'll give you a note. Our funds. Yeah. Okay. As sand, we add 30. 35. What? 35 percent. 35 left. And a 35,000. No, we cut 30. We cut 30. We cut 30. So it'll be 35. 35 left. Yeah. So 35 is the new budget number. Yes. Yes. Yeah, that's what I have. Okay. So what that means is I have to find for, before we get to the board of articles, I got $1,493,410.56 tax rate. And when the budget is on board of articles, it's $1.897 million to have only a slight increase on your tax rate. Wendy, I got 1.5 where you said 1.4. Yeah, 1.571, right? 4.5. Well, remember, the $80,000 moved from general fund to highway. Well, yeah, but the bottom line tax rate's going to be the same. I haven't been deleting anything. Here's what I think we should do. I think Sharon should send you and the rest of the board the document we've been working on tonight. I will send you the warning that shows the various social services groups. We should meet here tomorrow at 6 and have everybody hopefully had an opportunity to look at the documents. So I want to amend what Denise just said. I'm not going to send it to everybody. It is in the form of the state bill. It's going to be adjusted live. It's all the changes Sharon made are live changes. It's already been made. So Wendy, we'll look at that and decide by side. Yeah, Wendy, I will send you an email so what you are working from is offline, right? Yeah, and we don't have to talk about the warning tonight because the warning doesn't need to be done. It has to be signed by January 23rd. So we've got time even. I've worked on my stuff. I'm pretty close. Well, no, you worked on the report. You worked on the report. I worked on the report. I didn't get very far, but I started. I started mine as a separate document and I'll add it in. Well, be gone is half done. Well, be gone is half done. Remember that? Does everybody remember that quote? No, your father told you that, right? No, it's Mary Poppins. You're welcome. Oh, a spoon full of sugar? OK. Yeah, that's very same. Send that to me and I'll look at it tomorrow morning. Thank you. Thank you, Wendy. Sounds good, baby. Thank you. Thank you. Wendy, you're wonderful. Love you. Wendy. OK. Love you, Wendy. Thank you. OK. We'll talk later. We'll talk tomorrow. OK, all right. OK, great. Thank you. Bye, Wendy. All right.